OMGMT

35mg 2C-I @ MGMT Show

How had we gotten to the show? I don't recall… It was Halloween night and MGMT was playing within two miles of the apartment, and I remember that we had already smoked a couple blunts and eaten around 35mg of 2C-I each before my two friends and I had first attempted walking to the show, but one of my friends had cut his nose on something protruding from the darkness along the sidewalk and he was bleeding enough for it to look bad, so we had stopped and let him clean it up at a Mexican restaurant while we called a cab… but… that cab never did show up, did it? No…

So, after the overly effeminate lead singer of the first band got off stage the drugs had already begun to peak- perfect timing. I wondered if MGMT would suck as badly live as I had heard… Even if they were terrible, there would be light and sound and I was with friends and full of chemicals, so I knew there was a good time to be had.

A horde of musicians painted like walking dead took the stage of a bar in a tiny little college town that would play pretend for any occasion- given enough of the student populace would allow each other the momentary conceit to a counter-culture that they did not understand, but could together pretend to have long been a part of… Why would they confine themselves to such an existence? Their rules, standards, and social status woes- all just imaginary and fleeting, foolish little things… but things that they let run their lives… Well, if it means that much to them, I thought… They were only fooling themselves.

I looked up, drugged up, to find the place full of tore up college kids- too drunk to dance, asking every other person if they could "find some drugs"… No, "bruhh", nobody I know has "rolls" or "blow", sorry…

The musicians in the zombie costumes didn't make any announcements. The crowd was murmuring, not even really paying much attention. The lights went off, the sound came on- the screen behind the band blew up with psychedelic imagery, chords and melodies exploded from the eight foot speakers all through the place, lasers scattered designs in bursts of colorful light all across the ceiling, walls, and crowd.

Sensory overload. My body quaked, my mind raced. For a split-second there was complete darkness- nothing but my own consciousness suspended in still blackness. The shroud of The Veil consumed me for that miniscule window of time before my psychedelically ravaged brain broke the barrier and was flung face first for the next few hours into the unrelenting power of the Beyond.

The rest of the otherwise distracted crowd became irrelevant, and I was left to my own physical and psychological paradise, parading as a paradigm for psychedelic power. With my eyes mostly closed to everything but the sensory smorgesbourge circling my cerebrum, I danced with wild abandon, sweating shamelessly, soaking in the psychedelia the songs supplied.

The rumble of the sounds and rapid flashing of the lights had soon drenched every fiber of my being and there was nothing more to behold: light, music, design, and my own body all entirely enraptured with a single experience.

There was a ten second lapse in the action- I guess the band got thirsty. Where was I again? Oh yeah, surrounded by people staring at me like a fucking lunatic… The poor fools, if only they understood what was on the outside of the cages they had constructed for themselves… Oh well, another song started playing.

I closed my eyes and began to dance. With every note another tiny beam of color shot through my mind, hitting the back of my head and bouncing like a laser from a mirror, continuing its course. These differently colored beams of light had soon collected, continually crashing through the corners of my cranium, creating within my mind a three-dimensional spider-web of fiber-optic cables, pulsing with electric currents of every color. As I danced, eyes shut, this fiber-optic spectacle grew and spread throughout my entire body- all beautiful to see from my mind's eye.

Still dancing like no one else was around I surveyed the rest of the crowd, eyes still wide shut. I could see all of the individual people there as shadows, just the shapes of humans. My perspective on the scene drifting upwards towards the ceiling, my conscious seeming to hover over the crowd leaving my frantic physique on the floor, I began to see something of baffling beauty. The dazzling display that I had just witnessed within myself was unfolding throughout the rest of the crowd: miniscule rays of radiant techni-color were manifesting within the shadowy bodies, bouncing and breaking to create what looked like wondrously woven webs contained within everyone present. Was I the only person present able perceive it? I might have been the only person there at all..

How could these people not see this unbelievably complex beauty contained within themselves? or all the others around them? How had I been blind to it before? Was it hidden? or just yet to be discovered? Had I been so shallow as to let some popped collars and frat-boy vocabulary bring me so quickly to judgment? I suppose so… I just kept dancing.

The first notes of "Kids" began to play. I screamed like a man possessed and cried like a child.

What had been empty three-dimensional shadows were now more fantastically illuminated than any firework show. The brilliant fiber-optics began to break through the periphery of the individual shadows and to shine through to those around them, the network of pulsating wires growing more complex, more beautiful, the light growing as the wires became more intertwined, the music and the motion feeding its growth.

At some point the music had stopped and most of the crowd had cleared out. I was drenched in sweat ringing my hands, still lost in ecstatic religious release screaming, "Too good, just too good." A cute girl with a friend at her side walked up to me and whispered, "What are you tripping on?" giggling, seemingly very entertained by my public lack of give-a-fuck. I had a short conversation with her and a hug that lasted just as long as the rest of our experience together.

Back at the apartment, the drugs in my blood still pretty hard at work, I got to hang out with a great number of friends I hadn't gotten to see in much too long (they were in town for the show). We started smoking blunts and bowls and broke out the brew, shootin' the shit having an amazing time- all well aware, at least for the moment, that life is just too good. That night I finally Truly solidified that previously realized beauty and majesty that is at all times exuding from all of life, if only I will open my eyes to it. And I have clung to it.